Clive VAN DEN BERG (b. 1956)
Love’s Ballast
2004
wood
160 x 60 x 60 cm
This sculpture was made in 2003 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, when a disease that was eating away at the innards of the country went largely unseen and unspoken, shrouded in denialism, until it began to show up in welts and Kaposi’s sarcoma (one of the most common cancers in people living with HIV) on the bodies of those afflicted by it.
Love’s Ballast I
2003
cotton, cloth, jelatong, stone, acrylic
235 x 120 cm
In Love’s Ballast I (2003) the surface of the painting is marked by irregular shapes reminiscent of scars or boils. This work was made in 2003 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, when a disease that was eating away at the innards of the country went largely unseen and unspoken, shrouded in denialism, until it began to show up in welts and Kaposi’s sarcoma (one of the most common cancers in people living with HIV) on the bodies of those afflicted by it.
Skin & Ghosts Series, XIII
2006
monoprint with watercolour
63 x 46 cm
In the Skin and Ghosts (2006) series of monoprints, the skin is penetrated by an abstract snake-like entity or an amalgamation of invader cells. This work was made in 2003 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, when a disease that was eating away at the innards of the country went largely unseen and unspoken, shrouded in denialism, until it began to show up in welts and Kaposi’s sarcoma (one of the most common cancers in people living with HIV) on the bodies of those afflicted by it. Spanning the years just before and after the rollout of antiretrovirals (ARVs) in the public health system began in 2004 (following a tough political struggle), these works bespeak the plague years.
Skin and Ghosts (monoprint series IV)
2006
monoprint
122 x 55 cm
In the Skin and Ghosts (2006) series of monoprints, the skin is penetrated by an abstract snake-like entity or an amalgamation of invader cells. This work was made in 2003 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, when a disease that was eating away at the innards of the country went largely unseen and unspoken, shrouded in denialism, until it began to show up in welts and Kaposi’s sarcoma (one of the most common cancers in people living with HIV) on the bodies of those afflicted by it. Spanning the years just before and after the rollout of antiretrovirals (ARVs) in the public health system began in 2004 (following a tough political struggle), these works bespeak the plague years.
Skin and Ghosts (monoprint series V)
2006
monoprint
122 x 55 cm
In the Skin and Ghosts (2006) series of monoprints, the skin is penetrated by an abstract snake-like entity or an amalgamation of invader cells. This work was made in 2003 at the height of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, when a disease that was eating away at the innards of the country went largely unseen and unspoken, shrouded in denialism, until it began to show up in welts and Kaposi’s sarcoma (one of the most common cancers in people living with HIV) on the bodies of those afflicted by it. Spanning the years just before and after the rollout of antiretrovirals (ARVs) in the public health system began in 2004 (following a tough political struggle), these works bespeak the plague years.
Man Uncomfortable II
2006
wood
49 x 15 x 6.5 cm
In Man Uncomfortable II (2006), several craters are visible in the otherwise smooth wooden surface of the carved figure. Spanning the years just before and after the rollout of antiretrovirals (ARVs) in the public health system began in 2004 (following a tough political struggle), these works bespeak the plague years.
Man Uncomfortable V
2006
wood
120 x 21 x 6.5 cm
In Man Uncomfortable V, the figure seems to be unfurling from a deathly sheath of his own flesh. Spanning the years just before and after the rollout of antiretrovirals (ARVs) in the public health system began in 2004 (following a tough political struggle), these works bespeak the plague years.
Van den Berg often depicts the body itself as a landscape and sees the body and the land as sites that carry memories and scars. Although the works in the SABC Collection are figurative engagements with the human form, they provide vital insight into Van den Berg’s understanding of our relationship to landscape as an embodied, physical experience—wounds and scars in the flesh are equivalent to wounds and scars in the land and can be read as a subjective continuum of psychosocial impacts and political memory.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Luanshya, Zambia, Clive van den Berg is an artist, curator, designer, writer and teacher who has worked across mediums throughout the course of his prolific career, producing a range of works unified by his enduring focus on five interrelated themes: memory, light, landscape, desire, and the body. He has focused on pioneering the insertion of queer perspectives into the larger rewrite of South African history throughout the course of his prolific career.
In his paintings, he delves into the porous nature of land, acting as a vessel for lived experiences and unearthing unresolved layers beneath its surface. Van den Berg’s sculptural is focused on the male form and the symbolic resonance of skin to explore themes of vulnerability and exposure. Through this vulnerability, he challenges traditional notions of masculinity and brings to light the ever-present spectre of mortality.
For several years, he worked on his own and in collaboration with colleagues in a collective called trace, whose primary activities were the development of public projects, including the artworks for the Northern Cape Legislature and, with the trace team, museum projects for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Constitution Hill, Freedom Park, the Workers’ Museum, The Holocaust and Genocide Centre and other projects.
Van den Berg has extensive experience working on large-scale institutional projects with teams representing diverse constituencies: urban planners and policy makers, architects, landscape designers, museum curators, historians, community liaison officials and representatives of local and national governments.
Van den Berg’s retrospective, Porous, took place at the Wits Art Museum in 2024 and was accompanied by a book, published by Skira.
Other solo exhibitions include: Remembering, a survey exhibition of paintings, prints and sculptures, Kwa-Zulu Natal Society of Art Gallery, Durban (2021); Personal Affects, Museum of African Art, New York (2005).
Major curated exhibitions include: If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Our Future: Selections of Contemporary South African Art from the Nando’s Art Collection, The African American Museum of Dallas, Dallas (2023); Breaking Down the Walls: 150 years of Art Collecting, Iziko SANG, Cape Town (2023); Screening of Memorials Without Facts: Men Loving, São Paulo Museum of Art (2018); Earth Matters: Lands as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. (2013-2014).
Collections include: El Espacio 23, Miami; Amant Foundation, New York; A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town; Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg; Spier Arts Trust, London; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Washington DC and Video Brasil, São Paulo.
Van den Berg lives and works in Johannesburg.